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a 

Farm  Life  Conditions 


in  the  South 

Chapter  IV. 

Denmark’s  Remedies:  Education 
and  Co-operation 


E.  C.  BRANSON,  President 

State  Normal  School 
ATHENS,  GA.* 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding,  from 
University  of  North  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hill 


https://archive.org/details/farmlifeconditio02bran 


?  30  4/4 


Farm  Life  Conditions  in  the  South 

Chapter  IV. 

Denmark’s  Remedies:  Education  and 

Co-operation. 

E.  C.  BRANSON,  State  Normal  School 
Athens,  Georgia. 


No  remedies  for  farm  life  decline  are  worth  considering  if 
they  do  not  tend  to  make  farm  life  profitable,  comfortable,  at¬ 
tractive,  and  safe.  Moreover  they  need  to  be  simple  and  direct, 
practical  and  possible.  The  remedies  are  of  varied  sort.  Funda¬ 
mentally  they  are  educational  in  the  very  widest  sense  of  that 
term,  but  also  they  are  economic  and  social  as  well.  And  again, 
the/y  are  self-help  remedies  as  certainly  as  they  are  legislative 
remedies. 

Before  taking  up  in  -detail  the  suggestions  barely  outlined 
above,  it  is  tremendously  worth  while  to  study  a  concrete  exam¬ 
ple  of  conspicuous  success  by  farmers,  amid  discouraging  sur¬ 
roundings  and  circumstances.  The  Danish  farmers  spelled  their 
way  out  of  difficulties  even  more  direful  than  Southern 
farmers  have  ever  yet  faced,  and  it  is  instructive  to  know  just 
how  they  did  it. 

The  Danish  Farmer  State  — Denmark  is  a  little  country  on 
the  western  coast  of  Europe.  It  is  about  one-fourth  the  size  of 
Georgia,  and  has  a  population  about  equal  to  that  of  Georgia. 
The  western  side  of  the  Danish  mainland,  or  Jutland,  is  a  barren 
waste  of  sand-dunes,  blown  up  by  prevailing  westerly  winds 
through  long  ages.  The  central  portion  running  north  and 
south  was,  until  18  65,  a  waste  region  covered  with  heather  and 
other  wilderness  growths.  Until  adversity  taught  them  how  to 
reclaim  it,  this  heath  country  was  supposedly  worthless  for 


3 


farming.  The  eastern  side  of  Jutland  and  the  Danish  islands  in 
the  Baltic  were  for  a  long  time  almost  the  only  portion  of  Den¬ 
mark  fit  for  agriculture.  When  the  Napoleonic  wars  were  over, 
early  in  the  last  century,  the  people  of  Denmark  were  stripped 
bare,  almost  to  the  very  bone.  Their  shipping  had  been  des¬ 
troyed  and  their  trade  and  commerce  utterly  ruined.  They  had 
lost  Sweden  and  later  in  the  century  were  to  lose  Schleswig- 
Holstein.  The  peasant  farmers  were  in  a  condition  barely  re¬ 
moved  from  serfdom.  Indeed,  they  did  not  win  their  freedom 
until  184  5.  We  have  never  seen  in  this  country,  and  I  hope  may 
never  see,  such  dire  poverty  and  distress.  And  yet  the  people  of 
this  same  ruined  state  are  today  the  wealthiest  people  in  Europe. 
That  is  to  say,  their  per  capita  wealth  is  the  greatest.  The  inter¬ 
ests  of  the  people  are  almost  entirely  agricultural.  They  culti¬ 
vate  only  ten  million  acres  of  ground,  or  about  one-third  the 
farm  area  of  Georgia;  but  they  maintain  a  population  equal  to 
ours,  and  in  addition,  they  export  every  year  more  than  ninety 
million  dollars  worth  of  butter,  eggs,  and  meats.  If  Georgia 
were  cultivated  with  the  same  kind  of  intensity,  diversity,  and 
skill  that  are  put  into  these  Danish  acres,  we  would  raise  twenty- 
five  billion  dollars  worth  of  agricultural  products  yearly,  or 
enough  to  maintain  a  population  three  times  as  great  as  the 
present  population  of  the  entire  United  States.  Our  soil  and 
seasons  are  incomparably  better  than  Denmark  ever  had.  If 
not  driven  by  poverty,  certainly  we  can  be  tempted  by  greed  to 
develop  our  agricultural  resources,  the  present  and  apparently 
the  permanent  high  prices  of  farm  products  considered. 

There  is  little  poverty  in  Denmark  and  there  are  no  slums  in 
her  cities.  In  19  06,  they  had  two  hundred  and  eighty  million  • 
dollars  in  their  savings  banks.  Eighty-nine  people  out  of  every 
one  hundred  own  their  own  homes  and  farms.  Daily  wage 
earners,  tenants,  number  only  eleven  in  the  hundred  of  population. 
They  are  few,  because  land  holdings  can  be  easily  acquired  upon 
fifty-year  loans  at  four  per  cent.,  a  rate  which  pays  the  interest  and 
creates  a  sinking  fund  to  pay  the  debt.  If  only  the  laborer  can 
raise  one-tenth  the  purchase  money,  he  can  borrow  the  balance 
on  the  land  itself,  either  from  the  state  banks  or  from  one  of  the 
five  hundred  and  thirty-six  co-operative  savings  banks. 

The  farmers  are  in  the  majority  in  both  houses  of  the  legisla¬ 
ture.  The  majority  of  the  cabinets  are  farmers.  The  govern¬ 
ment  is  essentially  democratic,  but  as  in  every  other  country 
where  the  population  is  largely,  or  most  largely,  land-owning 
farmers,  there  is  stable  opposition  to  revolutionary  socialism. 


4 


How  in  the  world  did  the  Danish  people  work  this  miracle, 
and  all  within  a  hundred  years? 

How  the  Danish  Farmers  Did  It. — In  the  first  place,  the 
Danish  people  are  reaping  the  full  benefit  of  widely  diffused 
education  of  all  sorts  and  kinds  whatsoever — long  term  element¬ 
ary  schools,  high  schools,  continuation  schools,  night  schools, 
trade  schools,  technical  schools,  itinerant  schools  from  the  agri¬ 
cultural  colleges  and  experiment  stations,  traveling  experts, 
school  and  state  bulletins,  folk-fests  or  circles  of  farmers  and 
farmers’  wives,  meeting  to  discuss  life  problems  and  business, 
educational  camp-meetings,  the  great  University  at  Copenhagen, 
and  so  on  and  on.  The  Dane  believes  in  education  with  all  his 
heart  and  soul  and  pocket.  And  if  ever  we  get  out  of  the 
woods  in  Georgia,  we  shall  have  to  put  into  education  ten  times 
as  much  money  as  we  are  now  spending,  both  privately  and 
publicly.  The  sooner  we  realize  this  fundamental  fact,  the  bet¬ 
ter.  Illiteracy  is  a  blasting,  blistering,  withering  curse,  and 
makes  nearly  every  progressive  measure  impossible.  Long  ago 
in  the  bad  old  days  of  the  absolute  monarchy  it  could  be  said 
of  the  Danes,  “The  common  people  do  generally  write  and 
read.” 

The  Danish  high  school  is  worth  speaking  of.  There  is  no 
other  high  school  in  the  world  just  like  it  and  no  other  with 
which  to  compare  it.  There  are  now  seventy  of  these  high 
schools,  with  seven  thousand  students  in  attendance.  These 
schools  are  the  children  of  the  great  heart  of  good  Bishop 
Grundtvig,  who  went  from  one  end  of  the  state  to  the  other, 
begging  and  pleading  and  thundering  his  message  of  social 
redemption.  They  were  established  by  means  of  independent 
local  support,  although  almost  all  of  them  now  receive  state 
aid. 

I  have  said  they  were  unique.  There  are  no  examinations, 
no  certificates,  no  prizes,  no  course  of  study,  and  almost  no 
books.  Strange  to  say,  neither  in  the  elementary  schools  nor 
in  the  high  schools  is  agriculture  taught,  and  almost  no  techni¬ 
cal  instruction  of  any  other  kind  is  given.  The  aim  of  the  Danes  is 
to  arouse  and  stimulate  and  inflame  the  minds  of  their  young  peo¬ 
ple  in  order  to  make  them  hungry  for  all  the  education  and 
learning  that  can  come  to  them  later  in  the  twenty-nine  agri¬ 
cultural  colleges  and  the  great  University  at  Copenhagen;  or, 
what  is  just  as  important,  perhaps,  to  prepare  them  for  all  the 
self-education  that  comes  through  newspapers,  magazines,  bulle¬ 
tins,  books  and  life  itself. 


5 


Four  teachers  are  essential  in  these  high  schools.  First  ot 
all  is  the  teacher  who  is  in  love  with  and  saturated  with  the  old 
sagas  and  chronicles,  and  the  stories  of  heroes  and  heroism  in 
Danish  life  and  letters.  The  Dane  is  intensely  patriotic,  and  his 
first  care  is  to  make  the  chifdren  so.  Next  comes  the  teacher 
who  is  a  master  of  his  mother  tongue  and  who  himself  has 
charms,  gifts,  and  graces  of  literary  sort.  The  third  teacher 
is  learned  in  all  that  concerns  his  country’s  industries  and 
means  of  existence.  (Economics).  The  (fourth  must  be 
acquainted  with  the  laws  of  his  country.  (Civics  and  Law). 
After  these  subjects  and  next  in  importance  are  mathematics 
and  science. 

The  young  people  leave  their  work  in  the  fields,  the  work¬ 
shops  and  kitchens,  and  swarm  into  these  schools;  young  women 
in  the  summer  and  the  young  men  in  the  winter  months,  for 
lectures  on  history,  literature,  political  economy,  psychology, 
physics  and  chemistry;  indeed  upon  every  subject  that  has  fed 
human  intelligence  since  the  beginning  of  time.  In  the  early 
fall  the  old  people  flock  into  these  high  schools  with  their  bed¬ 
ding,  for  a  week’s  camp-meeting,  and  sit  down  to  a  feast  of 
lectures  on  Islam,  Armenia,  Martin  Luther,  Wagner’s  operas, 
Gladstone,  on  just  anything  and  everything  that  is  quickening  and 
cultural.  Afterwards  these  young  people  go  into  the  twenty- 
nine  agricultural  colleges  of  the  state,  some  nine  thousand 
yearly;  others  into  the  great  University.  The  government  has 
experiment  stations  everywhere  and  a  small  army  of  experts 
moving  about  among  the  farmers,  advising  with  them  about 
the  diseases  of  swine  or  cattle  or  horses,  plant  diseases  and 
remedies,  methods  of  cultivation,  the  marketing  of  crops,  and 
so  on.  Not  only  do  the  government  bulletins  upon  agriculture 
flood  the  country,  but  the  farmers  read  them,  and  in  every  com¬ 
munity  organizations  are,  year  in  and  year  out,  discussing  agri¬ 
cultural  questions,  questions  of  business  and  trade,  the  finances 
and  management  of  every  organization,  and  every  other  con¬ 
ceivable  question  that  has  to  do  with  the  welfare  of  Denmark. 

• 

No  stupid  people  could  ever  have  accomplished  the  wonders 
that  Denmark  has  accomplished,  and  no  such  results  could  ever 
have  come  to  an  ignorant,  illiterate,  unalert,  and  self-satisfied 
people.  Ignorance  and  illiteracy  are  expensive  disqualifications 
for  a  man  or  a  people.  To  an  intelligent  folk,  like  the  Danes, 
everything  is  possible. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  the  Dane  had  intelligence  enough 
to  know  that  the  ownership  of  land  was  the  hope  of  safety  in 


6 


politics  and  the  bed-rock  of  security  in  the  business  of  farming. 
When  the  fortunes  of  this  state  were  at  the  very  lowest  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  peasant  farmers  began  to  acquire  small 
land  holdings.  Sixty-eight  thousand  of  these  farms  are  less 
than  one  and  one-half  acres;  sixty-five  thousand  are  from  one 
and  one-half  to  thirteen  and  one-half  acres;  forty-six  thousand 
from  thirteen  and  one-half  to  forty  acres;  and  sixty-one  thou¬ 
sand  from  forty  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  acres.  Eighty-nine 
per  cent,  of  the  farmers  own  their  own  farms.  The  large  estates 
have  great  difficulty  in  getting  daily  wage  earners,  because  it  is 
so  easy  for  industrious  and  thrifty  laborers  to  buy  and  own  their 
own  farms.  These  estates  must  periodically  import  help  from 
Germany  and  Sweden  at  great  expense  and  with  such  difficulty 
that  the  old  feudal  properties  are  being  sold  off,  little  by  little, 
year  by  year.  The  ratio  of  independent  farm  owners  is  steadily 
increasing. 

One  thing  worth  noticing  is  the  effect  upon  the  cities.  The 
Danish  cities  are  not  troubled  by  acute  slum  problems  for  the  sim¬ 
ple  reason  that  country  life  is  too  attractive,  too  profitable,  and  too 
comfortable  for  any  industrious  and  thrifty  man  to  live  in  the 
cities  amid  the  squalor  and  discomforts  of  tenement  slums. 
Denmark  is  one  of  the  few  countries  in  the  world  in  which  the 
cities  have  not  flourished  at  the  expense  of  the  country,  and 
where  there  is  no  need  to  cry  “Back  to  the  farm.” 

3.  In  the  third  place  the  Danish  farmers  were  intelligent 
enough  to  see  the  power  of  union,  organization,  and  co-opera¬ 
tion,  and  to  see  it  without  argument.  The  farmers  of  Denmark 
organize  almost  as  unconsciously  as  they  breathe.  Fortunately 
they  are  settled  upon  a  comparatively  small  area,  one  hundred 
and  fifty  people  to  the  square  mile,  and  so  do  not  face  our  dif¬ 
ficulties  of  sparse  population,  scattered  widely  over  a  great  ter¬ 
ritory  like  Georgia.  The  Danish  farmer  from  the  beginning  was 
a  social  creature,  and  so  did  not  need  to  overcome  the  rani 
individualism  bred  by  isolation  and  loneliness. 

The  organization  of  co-operative  enterprises  began  less  than 
thirty  years  ago,  but  now  the  Danes  have  one  thousand,  eighty 
seven  co-operative  dairies,  embracing  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  all 
the  farmers.  They  ship  nearly  one  million  dollar’s  worth  of  but¬ 
ter  every  week  to  England.  They  have  thirty-four  co-operative 
slaughter  houses.  Their  co-operative  Egg  Export  Society  num¬ 
bers  fifty-seven  thousand  members.  The  eggs  are  collected  and 
stamped  each  day.  If  a  farmer  has  only  one  egg,  he  can  market 
that  one  egg.  His  market  comes  to  his  door  everyday.  In  190S, 


7 


the  egg-  business  amounted  to  $6,600,000.  Danish  eggs  bring 
fancy  prices.  They  are  always  fresh,  they  are  better  packed  than 
any  others  and  are  carefully  graded.  The  farmer  who  slips  in 
a  bad  egg  is  promptly  fined.  There  are  five  hundred  and  thirty- 
six  co-operative  savings  banks  and  the  depositors  number  more 
than  one-half  the  entire  population.  It  goes  without  saying  that 
they  have  a  parcels  post. 

But  the  farmer  also  does  his  buying  at  wholesale.  It  is  co¬ 
operative  buying  through  their  great  wholesale  agency,  and  last 
year’s  business  amounted  to  $17,500,000.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
the  Danish  peasant  is  saturated  with  the  culture  of  his  nation, 
with  the  culture  which  comes  from  a  mastery  of  subjects  and 
an  understanding  of  conditions  of  life  in  his  own  country  and 
every  other.  He  knows  that  in  the  business  management  of 
industrial  enterprises,  business  is  strictly  business,  without 
favoritism  or  politics.  He  long  ago  learned  that  both  are  ex¬ 
pensive. 

Two  men  must  be  credited  with  a  great  part  of  the  success 
of  the  Danish  co-operative  enterprises.  They  are  J.  C.  la  Cour 
and  N.  J.  Fjord,  who  were  not  farmers  at  all,  but  organizers  and 
inventors.  Their  genius  and  talents  would  have  made  them 
abundantly  rich  in  any  country  in  the  world.  They  have,  how¬ 
ever,  been  patriotic,  disinterested  servants  of  their  people — 
worth  their  weight  in  very  diamonds  to  Denmark. 

Co-operation  in  the  United  States. — Co-operative  enterprises 
among  the  farmers  of  the  United  States  is  making  great  head¬ 
way.  Whenever  success  has  been  won  it  has  been  after  years 
of  struggle  with  doubt,  faint-heartedness,  incompetency,  and 
failure  over  and  over  again.  It  is  a  long,  steady,  up-hill  pull 
against  difficulties  that  are  inconceivable  until  the  effort  is  made. 
But  the  prize  is  worth  the  risk  and  the  struggle. 

The  grain  growers  of  the  middle  West  have  now  more  than 
fifteen  hundred  co-operative  grain  elevators  with  200,000  mem¬ 
bers.  Iowa  alone  has  about  3  00  grain  elevator  associations 
and  Illinois  about  as  many.  Other  hundreds  are  scattered 
throughout  Minnesota,  Nebraska  and  the  Dakotas. 

They  have  finally  solved  the  difficulties  of  marketing  their 
grains  in  the  great  centers  where  the  commission  merchants 
used  to  be  under  the  duress  of  railway  influences. 

The  grape  growers  of  Wisconsin  are  organized  for  business 
purposes  and  after  years  of  struggle  are  winning  success  at 
last.  After  thirty  years  of  failure  the  Fruit  Growers’  Associa¬ 
tion  of  California  has  finally  won  its  fight,  at  least  in  the 


8 


marketing  of  citrus  fruits.  And  the  same  thing  may  be  said  of 
the  Georgia  Fruit  Growers’  Association. 

The  Southern  Texas  Truck  Growers’  Association  sold  last 
year  nearly  thirty-four  hundred  cars  of  onions,  grown  upon 
about  eight  thousand  acres,  yielding  some  twenty  thousand 
pounds  to  the  acre.  They  keep  their  own  marketing  agent  in 
New  York  city  and  another  in  St.  Louis.  The  Association  turns 
back  to  the  farmer  a  net  profit  of  from  $1.04  to  $2.34  a  hundred 
pounds,  after  paying  handsome  salaries  to  their  general  mana¬ 
ger,  their  district  managers  and  assistants,  their  inspectors  and 
marketing  agents  in  the  big  cities. 

In  the  South  for  the  present,  the  great  problem  is  the  ware¬ 
housing  and  marketing  of  our  cotton  crop.  The  Farmers’ 
Union  has  made  astonishing  headway  toward  this  end,  the  dif¬ 
ficulties  considered. 

In  Alabama  its  members  own  and  operate  more  than  one 
hundred  warehouses.  They  sell  cotton  direct  to  European  spin¬ 
ners,  while  the  Mobile  and  Birmingham  exchanges  buy  in  whole¬ 
sale  lots  and  give  their  members  reduced  prices  on  fertilizers, 
farm  implements,  dry  goods,  staple  groceries,  etc. 

In  Arkansas  the  Union  has  9  8  cotton  warehouses  and  as 
many  gins  and  cotton-seed  houses.  They  have  many  co-operative 
stores,  the  one  at  Jonesboro  being  capitalized  at  $300,000.  In 
three  counties  of  the  State  a  Union  co-operative  enterprise 
handled  $500,000  worth  of  fruit  in  one  season. 

The  Georgia  Unions  have  134  cotton  warehouses,  600  acres 
of  phosphate  land  and  a  factory,  and  also  a  farm  implement 
factory.  They  sell  cotton  direct  to  the  spinners  and  have  nego¬ 
tiated  cotton  loans  amounting  to  three  million  dollars. 

In  Mississippi  the  Farmers’  Union  Warehouse  Company  at 
Jackson,  has  a  capital  of  one  million  dollars  and  63  allied  Union 
warehouses.  It  handles  farm  supplies  for  its  members  in  car 
load  quantities. 

Oklahoma  has  several  flour  mills  and  25  co-operative  associa¬ 
tions. 

In  South  Carolina  the  Union  has  a  newspaper,  a  bank,  a 
trust  company,  a  brokerage  company  and  ten  cotton  warehouses. 

The  Tennessee  Union  owns  28  cotton  warehouses  and  as  many 
gins  and  seed-houses;  seven  peanut  warehouses,  one  peanut  re¬ 
cleaning  plant,  15  union  stores,  canning  and  tobacco  factories, 
and  one  chair  factory. 

The  Arkansas,  Missouri  and  Mississippi  Unions  have  estab¬ 
lished  a  great  cotton  company  at  Memphis,  which  last  year 


9 


negotiated  one  loan  of  nearly  two  and  a  half  million  dollars. 

Texas  has  136  co-operative  cotton  gins,  321  cotton  ware¬ 
houses,  an  oil  mill,  an  electric  light  plant,  and  flour  mills.  The 
mortgage  indebtedness  of  the  farms  of  the  State  has  been  re¬ 
duced  more  than  one-half  in  six  years  and  the  banks  of  Texas 
have  agreed  to  furnish  more  and  cheaper  money  than  hereto¬ 
fore  on  cotton  grain  and  cattle.  The  Union  clearing  houses  buy 
and  sell  and  post  farmers  on  the  markets.  They  have  suc¬ 
cessfully  struggled  with  the  railroads  for  lower  rates  on  in¬ 
terstate  commodities.  The  Union  has  a  central  cotton  selling 
agency  at  Galveston  with  its  own  classer  in  charge,  to  whom 
cotton  can  be  consigned  for  sale  or  for  borrowing  money. 

The  Unions  in  Virginia  own  fertilizer  and  mixing  plants, 
and  do  extensive  co-operative  buying. 

It  is  an  inspiring  story  of  Union  and  co-operation;  neverthe¬ 
less  the  (farmers  of  the  South  need  to  extend  and  perfect  their 
co-operative  enterprises.  Mr.  James  J.  Hill  is  quite  right  in 
saying,  “When  the  farmer  has  produced  the  share  of  natural 
wealth  that  corresponds  to  his  best  effort  he  must  be  able  to 
find  a  purchaser  that  will  enable  him  to  live  in  comfort  and 
enjoy  at  least  a  moderate  degree  of  prosperity.”  And  this  can 
never  be  the  case  so  long  as  the  transporters  and  exchangers 
get  $65.00  out  of  every  $100.00  worth  of  farm  stuff  that  reaches 
the  final  purchaser.  Prosperity  for  all  the  rest  of  the  world 
might  come  under  such  conditions  as  these,  without  a  just  and 
equal  share  of  prosperity  for  the  farmer.  The  farmer  is,  there¬ 
fore,  obliged  to  organize  and  co-operate  in  self-defense,  not  only 
in  marketing  his  products  at  the  greatest  possible  figure,  but  in 
buying  farm  supplies  at  the  least  possible  cost. 

The  farmers  of  Denmark  co-operate  almost  to  a  man.  They 
not  only  determine  the  prices  they  get  for  their  products,  but 
also  the  prices  they  pay  for  farm  supplies.  At  least,  they  do 
not  buy  and  sell  at  the  utter  mercy  of  other  organized  busi¬ 
nesses. 


10 


